Ruffin McNeill settles into life at OU

NORMAN (TNS) — A little before noon Wednesday, the Oklahoma football coaches began emerging from the clubhouse at the Jimmie Austin Golf Course in Norman.

They trickled down the back steps toward the giant tent that offered temporary refuge from the harsh sun and housed a catered barbecue lunch for fans attending the annual Sooner Appreciation Day Golf Scramble.

Toward the end of the informal coaches’ processional, two more figures stepped out of the air-conditioned building, one a bit more recognizable to the OU fans than the other.

But the pair were plenty familiar with each other.

Together, head coach Lincoln Riley and recently hired defensive line and assistant head coach Ruffin McNeill descended the stairs into the sweltering heat, talking like they’d done for so many years at so many different schools.

With most there for the golf outing taking shelter under the tent, there wasn’t much fanfare around the duo’s entrance.

But even without a grand entrance, the pair’s appearance together, with McNeill wearing a white polo emblazoned with the crimson interlocking OU, signalled a new chapter in their coaching relationship.

For four years, McNeill was Riley’s boss, the head coach to Riley’s offensive coordinator at East Carolina. Before that, McNeill served in a variety of defensive positions at Texas Tech as Riley made the climb from student assistant to graduate assistant to wide receivers coach.

Now, their roles are reversed with Riley becoming the head coach to McNeill’s assistant position.

But those job titles don’t necessarily give one seniority over the other.

“We’ve never seen it like that,” Riley said at Big 12 Media Days last week. “I don’t think he would’ve ever said that I was working for him before, and I wouldn’t really say he’s working for me. We’re just working together in different roles.”

It didn’t take Riley long to add McNeill to his coaching staff. With a spot vacant thanks to his promotion, Riley picked up the phone and called Virginia coach Bronco Mendenhall to inquire about McNeill, an assistant on Mendenhall’s staff for the last year.

It wasn’t all that unlike the process that Bob Stoops went through when he hired Riley away from McNeill and East Carolina in 2015.

“He did it the right way,” McNeill said. “Just like when Bob called me and said he wanted to talk to Lincoln. Lincoln called Bronco and asked to speak to me. It was great.”

A week later, McNeill was being introduced as the Sooners’ defensive line and assistant head coach as his wife, Erlene, launched another housing search.

“I’ve been banned from the house market since 1987,” McNeill joked, adding that his wife had found a house and their things should be arriving this weekend.

For McNeill, joining Riley’s coaching staff gives him a unique vantage point to watch his mentee take the reins of one of the most heralded programs in college football.

“My ethos is earned, not given,” McNeill said. “Everything is earned. That’s my life ethos. Lincoln has earned it. At 19, I remember him coming and being a student assistant and not getting his dime. He worked like he was full time. Then I remember when he became a GA, it was the same mentality with Lincoln. Then he became full-time and it was the same mentality. He’s always listened with big ears and big eyes, listening and learning.”

Even though he’s earned a head coach position, the student is far from the master, and if Riley ever needs to access McNeill’s wealth of advice gained from five years as a head coach and more than three decades in the coaching profession, he only has to walk a couple steps down the hall in the south end zone compound.

After all, the route should be plenty familiar to him since it’s one he occupied before moving into the expansive head coach’s quarters.

“I took his office over,” McNeill said with a grin. “His office now is bigger than the one I had at East Carolina.”